As a youngster, I pestered my dad about accompanying he and his best pal, Wayne, on their small game hunts, that began when I was probably 7 or 8. But hunting was basically a fall activity.

My dad was also fisherman, and heck, fishing spanned a longer time frame. And fishing was an activity that didn’t require me waiting for dad to drive us; I had fishing opportunities within walking and biking distance.

I lived the first 12 years of my life in East Weissport, where I even had a small stream (Tar Run) in my backyard. It had a number of small, deeper pools that held a variety of small fish like creek chubs, white suckers and even an occasional sunfish species.

My bait was often a small rolled up piece of white bread, or in early summer, I had plenty of earthworms to use. If I wanted to catch something bigger than the 6-inch chubs, I only had to ride my Huffy bike about a half-mile west to the canal in Weissport, or a half-mile east to the Phifer Ice Dams.

The canal and ice dams offered me warmwater fishing, where I would catch pumpkinseed sunfish, largemouth bass, and in the canal, plenty of brown bullheads. (Pennsylvania has 160 identified species of fish, most of them warmwater species, and 39 of them are species of minnows.)

Now the more technical stuff. … I mentioned warmwater fish in the previous paragraph. Species like largemouth bass, carp and the many species of sunfish are classified as warmwater fish. They have adapted to live in water temperatures much warmer than what trout require.

With only a few exceptions, fish get the oxygen needed for survival through their gills. These blood-laden structures lie protected behind the operculum (hardened gill covers) and they are able to take the oxygen out of the water quite similar to how our lungs take oxygen out of the air.

If you keep a fish out of water for any length of time, it will “drown” in air, while conversely, if our lungs filled with water, we would drown. Our moist, fleshy lungs capture oxygen from the air we breathe.

Fish, like snakes, are ectothermic, relying on the outside temperature to control their body temperature. If the temperature drops, so does their body temp. However, a brook trout, a native of clear, cold streams, would die if the water temperature increases too much.

Brook trout, our state fish, and brown trout are classified as coldwater fish. They require higher amounts of oxygen, and you may know that colder water holds more dissolved oxygen. Streams like the Mahoning or Lizard Creek are approved trout waters, and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission does stock trout there. However, as summer approaches most of those stocked trout have been caught by anglers, and if not, both of these streams get too warm and the trout would likely succumb from the lack of sufficient oxygen.

As a youngster, I learned to swim and went to streams to swim, as probably many others my age did. Mom took us to Pohopoco Creek (Big Creek as we called it). The stream’s waters then, winding through the Big Creek Valley, would warm enough to swim. Big Creek’s brown trout in summer would congregate where colder streams like Pine Run or Wild Creek intersect, and there they found more oxygen.

Today, the remaining few miles below Beltzville Lake are much colder due to water releases from the colder depths of the dam. It now supports a healthy population of trout all year, even in the hottest months of the summer. (You wouldn’t find it conducive to swimming now, as my old pair of leaky hip waders reminded me recently.)

So, whether fishing, birding or taking photos, remember to just get out there.

I’ll offer some info on fish anatomies and their differences in a future column.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: Which of the following is really not an actual trout species? A. brown trout; B. brook trout; C. rainbow trout.

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: A rattlesnake’s rattle is technically called a cloche.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com